December 2010: Ninety nine per cent of West Country farms are now home to [barn] swallows. That’s the finding of this year’s RSPB run Volunteer & Farmer Alliance (V&FA), a unique survey that twins keen birdwatchers with landowners to find out more about birds on the region’s farms: here.

Black kites are a raptor variety that lives on multiple continents, and like several other varieties of bird (including the crafty bowerbirds), they’re avid decorators. For whatever reason, these black kites are terribly fond of white plastic, and the birds use these bits of our refuse to decorate their nests. Scientists who studied these birds in Spain report in Science this week that there is a meaning—and a strict honesty—to the decoration scheme: here.

The upper part of a double limestone statue of king Amenhotep III (1410-1372 BC) was unearthed at Kom El-Hittan in the west bank of Luxor. Kom el-Hittan is the site of the temple of Amenhotep III, which was once the largest temple on Luxor’s west bank. The temple originally had two entrances: one on the eastern side where the Colossi of Memnon reside, and one at the northern side, where the double statue was located. The statue was found during a routine excavation carried out by an Egyptian team of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny reported that the statue depicts Amenhotep III seated on a throne accompanied by the Theban god, Amun. The king wears the double crown of Egypt, which is decorated with a uraeus.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, remarked that the statue is one of the best new finds in the area because of its expert craftsmanship, which reflect the skills of the ancient Egyptian artisans. Dr. Hawass pointed out that King Amenhotep III is well known thanks to the overwhelming amount of statuary, which feature him in groupings with different deities, such as Amun-Re, Re-Horakhti, Bastet and Sobek. The latter statue is now a masterpiece of the Luxor museum.

Since this new find is the third of such double statues to be discovered at the site of Kom el-Hittan, it is possible that a large cache for King Amenhotep III’s statuary may have been buried in the area.

Like this:

In 1984 American Romanies demonstrated in Washington to protest the exclusion of our representation … on the US Holocaust Memorial Council. President Reagan made our first appointment in 1987, but in 2002 it was taken away by the Bush administration. Once again Romanies have been denied recognition of their history in the Holocaust.

The immigration law being debated in the National Assembly is part of a wave of anti-democratic measures by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is responding to rising social discontent with appeals to the neo-fascist vote: here.

These birds generally depart in the evening from the southern tip of Norway to the North Sea to fly to southern Europe. Today, however, the rain forced them to land earlier. Their ultimate goal is the Mediterranean, where they will remain throughout the winter.

SEATTLE — Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses and severed fingers.

The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.

Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.

“We’re in a powder-keg situation here,” said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute for Military Justice and a military law professor at Yale University.

Since the images are not classified, “I think they have to be released if they’re going to be evidence in open court in a criminal prosecution,” he said.

Maj. Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle, where the accused soldiers are stationed, acknowledged that the images were “highly sensitive, and that’s why that protective order was put in place.”

She declined to comment further.

At least some of the photos pertain to those killings. Others may have been of insurgents killed in battle, and some may have been taken as part of a military effort to document those killed, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Among the most gruesome allegations is that some of the soldiers kept fingers from the bodies of Afghans they killed as war trophies. The troops also are accused of passing around photos of the dead and of the fingers.

Four members of the unit — two of whom are also charged in the killings — have been accused of wrongfully possessing images of human casualties, and another is charged with trying to impede an investigation by having someone erase incriminating evidence from a computer hard drive.

“Everyone would share the photographs,” one of the defendants, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, told investigators. “They were of every guy we ever killed in Afghanistan.”

After the first slaying, one service member sent urgent e-mails to his father warning that more bloodshed was on the way. The father told the AP he pleaded for help from the military, but authorities took no action. A spokesman said Friday that the Army was investigating.

The graphic nature of the images recalled famous photos that emerged in 2004 from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those pictures — showing smiling soldiers posing with naked, tortured or dead detainees, sometimes giving a thumbs-up — stirred outrage against the United States at a critical juncture. The photos were a major embarrassment to the American military in an increasingly unpopular and bloody war.

In a chilling videotaped interview with investigators, Morlock talked about hurling a grenade at a civilian as a sergeant discussed the need to “wax this guy.”

Morlock’s attorney, Michael Waddington, said the photos were not just shared among the defendants or even their platoon. He cited witnesses who told him that many at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar Province kept such images, including one photograph of someone holding up a decapitated head blown off in an explosion.

That photo had nothing to do with Morlock, he said. It’s not clear whether it’s among the photos seized in the case.

On Sept. 9, Army prosecutors gave a military representative of the defendants, Maj. Benjamin K. Grimes, packets containing more than 1,000 pages of documents in the case. Included were three photographs, each of a different soldier lifting the head of a dead Afghan, according to an e-mail Grimes sent to defense lawyers.

Later that day, before the documents could be shared with the defense lawyers, the prosecutors returned to Grimes’ office and demanded to have the packets back, Grimes wrote, according to a copy of the e-mail first reported by The New York Times.

The prosecutors cited national security interests and a concern that the photos could be released to the media.

Grimes said his staff initially refused to return the photos, but the next day, the Army commander at Lewis-McChord who convened the criminal proceedings, Col. Barry Huggins, ordered them to do so. They complied.

At a preliminary hearing in Morlock’s case Monday, Army officials confirmed that the number of restricted photos is 60 to 70. The investigating officer said he would view the photos in private.

Defense attorneys will also be allowed to see them if they visit the criminal investigations office on base, but they cannot have copies — an arrangement that did not satisfy Grimes. The defendants have been detained and cannot travel to see the photos to assist in their own defense, he noted, and most of the defense lawyers are based out of state.

Michael T. Corgan, a Vietnam veteran who teaches international relations at Boston University, said it should be no surprise that, even after Abu Ghraib, some soldiers take gruesome pictures as war souvenirs.

“They’re proof people are as tough as they say they are,” Corgan said. “War is the one lyric experience in their lives — by comparison every else is punching a time clock. They revel in it, and they collect memories of it.”

The deaths of at least seven civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq have been attributed to members of an Army platoon presently facing military pre-trial hearings for murder: here.

Hearings continued this week into atrocities committed on Afghan civilians by US Army soldiers in Kandahar: here.

Pakistan: Sixteen people reportedly killed by missiles fired by suspected US drones in North Waziristan: here.

Islamist militants attacked and set fire to at least 20 tankers carrying oil for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Monday, the third such strike inside Pakistan in as many days, police said: here.

United Nations World Food Programme warned today that Pakistan’s devastating floods have interrupted delivery of food aid to Afghanistan that would have fed about a million people this winter: here.

June 2011. A unique piece of gorilla art is being auctioned by Paignton Zoo to raise money for international ape conservation. The Zoo – a registered charity – is selling a glass cast of the imprint of a gorilla hand: here.

INVESTORS in sport hunting in Uganda’s game parks have up to January next year to stop shooting wild animals for fun: here.

An artist just seven years old has produced paintings that have got people talking. Mainly because he’s a gorilla: here.

Wildlife rescue workers in Florida have discovered a common sandwich ingredient is perfect for cleaning toxic crude from the skin of oiled sea turtles.

Just days ago, government officials announced that the BP well responsible for the worst oil spill in American history is finally dead. Unfortunately, the crisis has only just begun for wildlife that lives in and around the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The staff at The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida are still seeing new oiled turtles come in from areas affected by the spill, and they are using an easy-to-get, safe, and effective kitchen condiment to save their lives.

The oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. When one dirty industry can purchase that much influence, who will step into the ring for average Americans? Here.